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You can ask the Reverend Richard Coles anything on his new live tour, so let’s cut straight to the chase. How’s the love life? ‘Excellent, thank you! I have a lovely time with Dickie, who came into my life a couple of years ago.’ Dickie is the Shakespearean actor Richard Cant, son of former Play School presenter Brian. ‘He hates me talking about him,’ says Richard with a wince, ‘but if you ask, there are things I can say.’
Their first date was at the Royal Horticultural Society Garden Wisley in Surrey. ‘I knew he was coming from work – he was in the play Orlando in the West End at the time – so I did a brilliant thing and packed an extra pair of Wellingtons. I estimated his shoe size correctly. I knew that was a cool move.’ How did it go down? ‘Well, he said later, “You had me at the Wellingtons.”‘
As anyone who saw him charm his fellow contestants on I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! just before Christmas will know, the Reverend Richard makes friends easily. The voice is posh and plummy, but the man is warm and witty and has seen it all, as a pop star and a priest.
After a string of big hits with The Communards in the 80s he took refuge from the excesses of fame by returning to the faith of his youth and becoming a vicar. He also kept up a career as a broadcaster, and has not only ventured into the jungle, but appeared on Celebrity MasterChef and Strictly Come Dancing too.
Then there are his best-selling novels about life and death in a rural rectory, the first of which, Murder Before Evensong, is currently being made into a series by Channel 5. ‘It’s nice to have a No 1 when you’re 25, but so much nicer to have one when you’re 62,’ he says. ‘I thought I was winding down, then all of a sudden things got busy.’
This self-deprecating chap is currently in theatres with his tour Borderline National Trinket, but today we’re in the kitchen of his 18th-century cottage on the South Downs. He’ll be spilling the secrets of the jungle, considering a Communards reunion and praising his new-found conversion to weight-loss jabs. But right now we’re talking about that first date, back in January 2023. ‘It was soon very obvious that Dickie is a lovely man.’
That was important, because they were meeting only three years after Richard had lost his husband David to liver failure. The devastated widower had written a beautiful memoir called The Madness Of Grief about his loss. He’d also moved to the village of East Dean for a new start. So how did Dickie approach a relationship with a very public man, who was still clearly missing the love of his life?
Richard with his new partner, the actor Richard Cant
‘With very great sympathy and grace. He never trespasses. He asks when it’s appropriate to ask. He is respectful. He too had a life before me, and I try to be respectful of that. We can’t do anything about what’s done, so we just try and get it right between us.’
They live quietly, says Richard. ‘We drink red wine and we watch telly. Dickie looks after his mum in Kent, she’s getting on in years, so we tend to go away. This year we’ve been to India and New York. Dickie says we have too many holidays, but I don’t want to work all the time. While I’m fit enough, I love to travel.’
And actually, Richard reveals, they’re about to take things to the next level. ‘He’s moving in. He will move here and we’re getting a place together in London, just somewhere to telephone and change, as they say. So that’s good.’
He has recently returned home from the West Midlands, where Murder Before Evensong was being filmed. ‘My onerous duties as an executive producer – which meant having bacon sandwiches and standing around – are pretty much done.’
Matthew Lewis, who was Neville Longbottom in the Harry Potter films, plays Richard’s hero Canon Daniel Clement. ‘I made Matt walk around in a dog collar, so he could see what it was like with people’s reactions. They just thought, “Why is Longbottom wearing a dog collar?”‘
The clerical sleuth lives with his widowed mother – played by Amanda Redman – and a pair of dachshunds called Cosmo and Hilda. These are a tribute to Richard’s real-life dogs Daisy and Pongo, who helped him through the loss of David but sadly had to be put to sleep last year. ‘How am I going to bond with a new dog if I’m away all the time?’ he says. ‘This is my major issue at the moment. I can’t get one until I’m around more. And Dickie is a cat person, so we’ll be getting a dog and a cat at the same time.’
He would certainly have missed them while he was in Australia for I’m A Celebrity. ‘I loved the jungle. I thought I wouldn’t be able to cope with it all, but I did and it was fun.’
The conditions surprised him. ‘I honestly thought that just off camera there’d be a proper loo with a shower and stuff, but there’s none of that. You s*** in a bucket with 12 other people. You wash your clothes in the creek, and keep finding mealworms in the crotch of your pants. Or cockroaches. And I was the only person who showered naked. I thought everybody did, but no.’
Richard recalls all this with relish: ‘It p***ed down, rats ran around, there were spiders as big as soup bowls, and snakes. The jungle was pulsating with life and weirdness. Still, I slept like a baby.’
The bushtucker trials were not a problem either. ‘I have two superpowers: I can tie a bow tie and I can eat anything. I was also Camp Chef for a bit. Not the first time I’ve been called that!’
He does have one confession to make. ‘There is a medical hut. I was allowed to say morning and evening prayer there. It’s not on camera and it’s air-conditioned, so there were some very long intercessions…’
The sexagenarian cleric struck up an unlikely friendship with social media star GK Barry. ‘I was looking for a bromance, you always get those on reality shows. Turned out mine was with a 25-year-old lesbian who made me laugh and laugh.’ The feeling was mutual, not least when she asked if he had ever met a royal. Yeah, came the answer. So what were they like? ‘Great in bed…’
He was joking of course, although she didn’t look sure. Richard also became pals with Coleen Rooney. ‘I only knew Coleen from the Wagatha Christie trial. At first I thought she was quite distant, then I realised she was very shy. Gradually, she opened up. Such a lovely woman: humble, thoughtful, uncomplaining, she looked fantastic every day. We just couldn’t figure out how she did it. And very family-oriented.’
Richard with GK Barry in the jungle and…
…with Jimmy Somerville in The Communards
The contestants still keep in touch via WhatsApp. ‘We watched boxing on telly the other day. The Rooneys have a ring in their house, so the kids were sparring. Barry [McGuigan, the former world featherweight champion who was also on I’m A Celeb] was giving tips. It’s a very jolly group.’
Richard lost eight kilos in the jungle, living on rice and beans. ‘I put it back on within two days when we finished. You have to be really careful, your stomach has got used to a meagre diet. Somebody told me, “Don’t eat a burger, you’ll be sick.” So I broke my jungle fast with a dozen oysters and some Champagne. Delicious.’
Now he has another way to lose weight and is very frank about it. ‘I was bullied by my neighbours, who are both on Ozempic. They’ve lost tons of weight. I was feeling a bit sad about being old and fat. I can’t exercise as much as I used to. The dogs are dead, so I haven’t got them to walk. So in the end the neighbours persuaded me. I found out they get 15 per cent off for signing me up. It’s a sort of pyramid drug scheme!’
How’s it going? ‘I’ve been on Mounjaro for six weeks now. A jab in your leg or belly once a week. It was a bit weird at first, until my stomach adjusted. I can eat food if it’s in front of me, but I don’t think about it all the time. That’s quite a change for me.’
How much weight has he lost? ‘I’m not looking. I don’t want to fret about it.’ So how does he know if it’s working? ‘I can feel it,’ he says, tugging at his waistband. ‘The evidence is in your trousers.’
There will surely be questions on tour about The Communards, whose cover of Don’t Leave Me This Way was the biggest-selling single of 1986. ‘I can witter on about myself for ages, it’s my favourite thing, but I realise that people have their memories of what something like a song meant to them, so it’s lovely to look back and talk about our shared experiences,’ he says.
So what are the chances of a comeback? ‘I’m still in touch with Jimmy [Somerville, the lead singer], but we’re at the stage of life now where we mostly exchange condolences. Jimmy’s mum died last year. My mum died last year. Jimmy is retired and he has a garden, which he looks after very well. He works in a food bank two days a week. He has a private, quiet life which, if anyone has earned, Jimmy has.’
The singer Sarah Jane Morris and drummer June Miles-Kingston live along the coast from Richard. ‘We bump into each other, but we have no desire to revive. I wouldn’t want to do it and I’m pretty sure Jimmy wouldn’t either. I think some things are better left where they were.’
Instead, he is joining the ministry team at a local parish church. ‘St Mary’s, Eastbourne,’ he says. ‘It’s a lovely church and very convenient for Waitrose. They’ve got a robed choir. We sing proper old hymns, the ones I like. The vicar is a great preacher. There’s tai chi on a Friday. Everything you’d want.’
That sounds jolly but I know he stepped away from the Church for a while after retiring from a parish, partly because of the CofE’s attitude to same-sex relationships. ‘I was out for a while, now I’m back in. I just stopped being angry. I realised the ten per cent of things I found unendurable were much less than the 90 per cent of things I found enjoyable.’
Richard was ordained in 2005, when he and many others thought the Church was heading towards a more modern attitude. ‘Things did not go in the direction I hoped.’ He and David claimed to be celibate in their civil partnership in order to be allowed to live together in his parish. ‘I chose not to tell the truth. I felt it was the lesser of two evils. I’m not proud of it, our business should be about the truth. But I felt the greater evil was to deny myself and David the opportunity to love each other as we wanted to – in a way which felt to me entirely harmonious with the will of God – just because of somebody else’s doubtful reading of scripture.’ So how can he stay? ‘Because we are obliged to live in hope, I’m afraid.’
He is sympathetic to Justin Welby, who stepped down as Archbishop of Canterbury in January over his handling of sexual abuse claims. ‘I think it was right that he went. But I was also sad that he went. The problem is not about the failures of an individual, it’s systemic and historic, and it’s very complicated.’
Would he want the job? ‘No. It’ll destroy you whoever you are. When Rowan Williams left I remember asking his wife Jane, “What have you learned in his ten years?” She said, “If your husband says he’s going to be Archbishop of Canterbury, say no!”‘
What would he like to see from the next archbishop then? ‘I’d like someone who has lived as a parish priest, knows the issues and understands the clergy. Someone who’s able to lead and inspire, but at the same time treat all of us as peers.’ Man or woman? ‘I don’t mind at all.’
While Welby was preparing to step down, Richard was on television every night making new friends in the jungle. Many viewers said on social media that they’d consider going to church if every priest was as warm and engaging as him. Is he consciously trying to win us all over?
‘I would want to win everybody over to tuning in to the frequency of God,’ he admits. ‘I think I can make it possible for some people. I’m absolutely certain I make it impossible for others, that’s my bad. I shall answer for that when the day of reckoning comes. In the meantime, I will do whatever I can do.’
Richard is on tour with Borderline National Trinket until 17 July. For tickets, visit richardcoles.com/live/
